Entry: fictile (adj.)
In context: "We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté."
Definition: Capable of being moulded, suitable for making pottery.
Other: I love DFW's use above as well as the following from the OED:
1837 T. Carlyle French Revol. I. i. ii. 10 Ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of creatures.
SNOOT score: 2
Page: 694
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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